Concluding My Meaningful Time with the TC3 Project

This semester marks my sixth and final semester as a research assistant for Drs. Katherine Johnson and Alyssa Lederer and their ongoing TC3 – Teaching to Change Campus Climate – Project. The TC3 Project examines the effectiveness of curricular interventions—specifically Tulane’s GESS 1900 (Sex, Power, Culture) and SOCI 2100 (Sociology of Sexualities)— in addressing sexual aggression on college campuses.

This semester, I publicly presented my senior Honors Thesis, which examines a subset of data collected in the broader TC3 study, at the Newcomb Scholars Senior Symposium. My thesis examined gender differences in rape myths, consent myths, and heteronormative attitudes and beliefs over time. I chose to look at students who took the intervention course GESS 1900 in the fall semesters of 2018, 2019, and 2020 and analyzed data from three measures contained within the questionnaire administered to students in the intervention course at the beginning and end of the semester. My findings suggested an interaction between gender and time for heteronormative attitudes and beliefs, suggesting that the intervention impacts students significantly depending on their gender identity. These findings and their implications provide valuable data about a subset of students within the intervention, contributing additional information for informing the TC3 project. Additionally, working with our data in the software SPSS Statistics has strengthened my comprehension of and ability to analyze our data set.

I also presented our current research at the Conceiving Equity event on January 26, 2023, the second time I have presented at a Conceiving Equity event. I enjoyed the experience of answering questions and sharing the importance and impact of our research with the Tulane community. This experience in the last two years has allowed me to gain additional confidence in my public speaking and presentational skills and has helped me craft a strong elevator pitch about TC3!

We are currently working on developing a public-facing source, such as a website, for our project. I began working on this task over the summer by examining other websites focusing on projects with similar sexual violence prevention and education initiative, such as Columbia’s SHIFT (Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation), for ideas about the layout and content of the TC3 Project. I am using ArcGIS Story Maps software to begin designing our website.

Over the last few semesters in this role, I experienced personal growth across several areas, including clear and prompt communication, confidence in speaking about and explaining our project, confidence in analyzing and comprehending the data we’ve collected in SPSS Statistics, strengths in effectively searching for and reviewing available literature on existing measures or topics of interest, and setting personal deadlines and goals. I greatly appreciate the knowledge and guidance I have received from working with Dr. Johnson and Dr. Lederer, especially Dr. Johnson’s willingness to help me learn how to use SPSS (which can be a frustrating process).

I am excited to see the great heights this project reaches after I graduate!